


Affinities

by threewalls



Category: Vagrant Story
Genre: Character of Faith, Competance, Devotion, F/M, Gen, Instinct, M/M, Points of View, Prayer, Prophecy, Spoilers, Supernatural Elements, Vignette, faith - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-06-15
Updated: 2004-06-15
Packaged: 2017-10-15 16:22:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/pseuds/threewalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A thematic study of relationships, of opposing forces and affinities. Vignettes set throughout the game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Affinities

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to lynndyre and nagia for beta.

_Fire_

"Your men are dying for that blasted key and you would burn the hostages as remedy? Sydney, are we now no better than the Cardinal's Blades?"

"The Duke dies. He would withhold the key and bury the City with his guilt."

You do not reveal yourself to Hardin, it seems. This pronouncement is met with a snort he would not dare unless he believed that we were alone. This needfully senseless search-- taxes him. Though it is I who watches each flame wink out, he would mourn in my stead.

"What can his power be to yours but raindrops on an ocean?"

His trust, for it is trust and not faith that he holds in me, battles with his humanity and his sense. I hope certain necessary fictions will feed his trust long enough for what is to come.

"The soul cannot be judged by its vessel. Do you doubt, or have you simply forgotten?" An inelegant sally at best. The time for spoken words has passed.

"Sydney, I--"

/Would you not take my power, Hardin?/ I interrupt, speaking to his mind.

He is silenced, though his apology is half his mind. I turn swiftly to him, a smirk schooled across my features. Hardin's passion does have its uses, but it is unfortunate during a crise. He requires much tending ere he sacrifice himself on the altar of ethical dilemma.

"If I offered it? If I grew weary?" My words echo on stone.

"You are not," he swallows. /Do not./

"Feign," I return, advancing, reaching, slowly cupping Hardin's face with the machinery you graciously gave me. Your gifts that are never not also curses.

"It brings you suffering. I cannot--" Hardin is fervently, unfortunately, honest.

"There can be pleasure in suffering, John." And in the kiss of metal and burning flesh, separated only by a thin film of blood.

"I do not--" I cannot feel his heartbeat quicken or the very human warmth of his skin, but Hardin breathes ragged. "I do not think such suffering would appeal to me, Sydney. You would die without."

"If you ran me through." I jest, hip pressing into his heat and hardness. He still feels so good, now, and after all this time. My eyelids flutter, reminding me where even I am human. Hardin's eyes are closed.

Every topic of distraction fuels need for more, but it is necessary. He is necessary.

Prophecy cannot focus on the prophet, so you have told me, for to do so is to invite madness. And so, my lady, what is it then that I do? What name would you give to following the myriad, conflicting streaks a man's destiny can light across time, from the moment of first meeting to the point where all life, all fuel burns to nothing?

If that is not madness, is my sanity, indeed, so much dearer a price?

/...Men run toward you in the hall. Your sire rots. Your salamander waits. Kindness would move your claws deeper. He bares his throat.../

"I do not weary," I remark, and he and I step apart in time.

Lady, pardon my arrogance and hypocrisy. I know I cannot both keep him from the City and at my side. I will divine by the movements of flames, extinguishing even now in the corners of my sight.

Hardin turns before speaking. He has trust enough, but not to my face.

"The hostages will burn, Sydney. If you think it best."

It will not burn me that no future will permit a good-bye. I am your faithful servant.

He is as much in your hands as I have ever been.

 

 _Earth_

As the ducal manor at Graylands burned, Riot appeared with terse questions and no explanation. Did she know the location of Leá Monde? She did, and several hours of hard riding later, she has led him to the city. Her course of action does not strictly constitute dereliction of duty. Her brief was to inform Agent Riot's mission and he does not think it has ended yet. Yet, somehow, Merlose knows that Grand Inquisitor Heldricht will not be impressed.

'Curiosity is your cardinal sin, Callo.'

Merlose can still taste the menthol from her mentor's good-bye. Only half a day hence, but Merlose feels much farther removed from Valnain, its civil politics, its civil politeness and her mentor's stern guidance. If she fails here, Eliza will not step forward to save her.

Agent Riot left Merlose with their horses some distance from Leá Monde's entrance. He disappeared into the shade not ten paces from the clearing she stands in. This is prudence that she understands.

They are so different. Riot's skin is thickened against thorns and branches. He carries or can find everything he needs. They’ve both forfeited modesty and fashion for ease of movement, Riot perhaps more so, but only she had felt the cold.

Riot is unlike any agent she has co-ordinated with. He does not stare at her body. His eyes are distant even looking her full in the face. She’s almost invisible to him, she thinks. Yet, he’s never lost track of her.

She cannot claim the same.

"Clear."

Riot's voice is deep, neutral and directionless. She cannot place him until he appears out of the trees, light and shade dappling his form as camouflage. Merlose nods, then hails him aloud, feeling blind.

Her training never intended her skills to match his, but she feels awed and slightly embarrassed by her lack. Personal criticism, again; Riot is aloof to even professional flaws.

Riot is a contradiction that worries her like a stone in her shoe. He wears a rood pendant that is overly wrought for masculine tastes. It is rare within the VKP to find one who holds their faith so visible, and presumably deep, when duty requires them to hold the kingdom above the church.

"Your faith brings you comfort?" she asks, stepping forward.

"It comforted my wife."

Riot turns back, and Merlose follows quickly after.

"I've never married."

Or even had very permanent lovers, Merlose adds, silently, thankful for that much self-control. She hasn’t had to curb her natural verbosity like this since her first month under Heldricht.

'Properly harnessed, Callo, it could become a virtue. Always ask the right questions.' Heldricht considers herself to be Melrose's instructor, not a lover. Both may teach, but only a lover forgives.

Merlose stumbles in boots too sharply heeled for grass. Riot catches her arm, saying nothing, and holds a branch back from the path until she moves past.

 

 _Water_

It begins as a whisper, a murmur of power, intent and familiar. Sydney's voice is as colourless as rainwater and as cold once it finds you.

/Is the boy secure?/

/He sleeps, behind sigil and beast. Sydney, I--/ His anxious, emotional questing (...the boy's silence, the Blades' presence, his own guilt for leaving Sydney...) meets a wall of ice. /--the Crimson Blades have entered the City./

/And sundry others, yes. They are but heads of a hydra. I have need of your arms, John./

He feels the voice brighten with quicksilver bubbles of mirth and curses the strength he draws from it.

/Hardin, I have a guest./

Immediately, the image of a still, dark woman assaults him. The moment his mind recognises her location, one of the poorer vintage wine cellars, his body follows.

Sydney says nothing upon his arrival, merely points to a rope. Hardin binds the woman's arms tightly at the wrist. He finds three daggers and a document, uncertain if his hands are guided. The paper is good, heavy with linen. He must unfold it to tear, leaving the pieces as they fall from his hands. It had been the woman's VKP mandate. Hardin pockets the daggers.

"La Signorina Inquisitora Callo Merlose." The foreign syllables roll as fluidly as any magic from Sydney's tongue. John Hardin knows that names have their own power.

The woman steps back, pure reflex from disorientation. He steadies her, holding the now tense muscles of her upper arms and noting, abruptly, how little the woman wears, how cold she must be underground. Had he a cloak, he would lend it to her, hostage or no.

A pulse of mingled curiosity and fear enters him, minutely tinted silver by reflection. Sydney smirks, and so Hardin lets go.

"Watch her, Hardin." Sydney turns, his hands already dancing a spell.

The woman appears cowed, silent and bound. She watches Sydney and so Hardin watches Sydney as well, tasting bile at his blatant need for excuse. He knows that Sydney is performing, that the river that has appeared around Sydney does not exist, but Hardin's skin can too easily imagine feeling its spray.

Sydney's hands glitter, finger-knives chiming in time with a chant so low it may be breathing. He recognises a word or two, in High Kiltean and what Sydney has taught him to appreciate as correct pronunciation. It surprises him that Sydney would choose to speak the words.

Sydney's tattoo begins to bleed, unprompted, in steady, dark rivulets that pool on the floor.

Hardin blinks, and both stone and Sydney are pale as before.

Uncomfortably familiar with the City’s generosity, he frets; in some matters, he does not want to be Sydney's equal. Had Sydney warned him? Is this the beginnings of true--

/Peace, Hardin./

Cool mist envelops his soul, something between a shroud and protection. He can predict when, but not why the ice would break. Strong emotion could draw certain of the City’s creatures like blood. Hardin knows he is, at the least, useful.

/The boy will speak again under Aurora's light and beyond these walls.../

"The Gallows, I think, should give him pause." Audible for the woman, it is equally an order. Sydney disappears in a shower of light, but distance makes little difference to his message.

/...As you shall bear witness./

 

 _Dark_

He finds her in the undercity, fighting. The undead fall before her blade, though she is retreating. He despairs at the hesitance in her lunges, he who taught her himself. He joins her, cutting three assailants to two, then one, the last left to her tender mercies.

When that is done, "Romeo!" she calls, with audible inflections of gratitude and delight. The blue-black walls steal the colour from her, leech away the pearl highlights in her hair and the delicate blush on her cheeks. Across the room, she has the look of one already dead, as though she belongs here.

The walls move then, the floor and ceiling with them. The city's corruption makes it weak; these shifts are the natural world's revulsion.

He knows that this will not be their tomb. He has faith. The disturbance lasts no more than a minute.

"Romeo!" She calls again and runs to him, winding herself round him like a vine or a snake.

She tastes sour, like everything has since they'd entered the city, like rot. There is a canker already growing within her that for all his love, he cannot stay.

It is a pity that the weaker sex succumbs too easily to the Dark's allure.

The Cardinal once told him their false prophet was a woman, a dancer and a whore. He can well believe it.

His lady said the glyphs were charming. She cannot read, and thus does not comprehend the taint that touches her mind to even look upon them. She does not take the gifts for their power, but out of some naïve wonder at their illusions. She is so even concerning her own 'gift', forced on her vulnerability.

He finally understands why the Cardinal did not permit women into the pact.

His humility did not question the decision, but now the reason has been revealed in good time. His love is delicate, too dangerously delicate for this cesspit. She does not know it, has not immunity like Tieger’s Amazon.

True and virtuous women are such easy prey.

"Well-met, my love, and lucky."

"This city is a fiend, forcing me to kill our knights again and again."

She laughs, but briefly, wiping her blade on the leather of one of the fallen. He recognise the man as one of the knights he left for her protection. He will not leave her alone again.

She is precious to him; he acknowledges the weakness. There is little he will not do for her benefit and in her company, he cannot imagine a greater sacrifice.

In the end, he will need her most of all.

 

 _Air_

He has seen too much here to trust his own mind, zombies, goblins and all the entries of a fanciful monk's bestiary. Merlose is a woman of honour instead of virtue. Only in this city could she be familiar and all he trusts of sanity.

“Twice. Once to save my life, once on orders."

Merlose pauses only briefly. She holds the mission too highly to betray his entry. His skill has improved, but for the moment, he sees through her eyes (feels her wrists chafing, her thighs aching).

“The Valendian public corps admits women for three reasons only."

It is strange that communication cannot carry through this tenuous union, but she drifts, calm and clear. It is so much lighter to be Merlose, holding her life too cheaply to fear. Sydney arouses her professional curiosity. Hardin, her pity, though the child merely frustrates her. For Riot himself, she thinks of maps and monsters, but it crosses to him too faint to understand.

"If they perform to the standard expected of male graduates -- without the benefit of any government funded training, or if they perform activities which require an agent of their gender." Here, he feels a rueful smile upon her lips. "Or if a operative of sufficient standing sponsors them, but the last isn’t law.”

“You know the law well?”

Hardin's voice shakes something in Riot's power and his vantage moves outside her (they stand beside a cloudstone precipice that all wait to cross). This gift mimics Hardin's; it requires a known focus.

Such thoughts are alien to Riot, but he listens, judging them against his own instincts; they carry her scent.

“Completely, or you could legally have my mandate, however moot that clause currently appears.”

Merlose turns to show Hardin her bound wrists. The knots are too tight for her to loosen; her wrists will be marked beneath her gloves.

“I am unarmed and shall be unaided until I return to Valnain to be reimbursed with identification. This city is a rabbit warren, John. I’d be lost within minutes. With my hands or without, I’m more threat to myself than to you."

"You are a hostage." Hardin moves to the edge, watching the cloudstone drift closer. The Duke's son follows, obediently allowing himself to be placed upon the man's shoulders. The child's arms loosely encircle the man's neck. The child has yet to be bound in any of Riot's visions.

"Is it his permission you require, John?” Her words are not demanding. This is a familiar argument.

Merlose steps forward, raising her bound wrists to the small of her back. She backs to what seems a hairsbreadth away from Hardin. He takes hold of her waist.

They watch the cloudstone approaching and step sideways onto the stone at exactly the same time, balancing, steady.

Riot can see them too easily as a family, man, wife and child, anywhere but danger. He should not feel responsible, and he damns Sydney for such blatant manipulation. He knows not the Duke's heir but Merlose is not Tia, not innocent nor defenceless.

Riot's leave is offered with no more control than his greeting, sliding from her into himself. The room is empty, quiet and still. They are in the cathedral and Riot will find them.

 

 _Light_

Lady Samantha stands at the base of the stairs, holding eleven candles in her arms. She waits until the knight who had brought them has completely disappeared below. Turning to the stairs and ascending, she prays for him first, hoping he will not die where none know his name.

With the next few steps, she prays for Commander Neesa, missing the absoluteness that carried Samantha through so many doubts. She prays for Sir Tieger, wishing for his patience. Samantha has not heard any report of Fathers Duane or Grissom for hours, but she does not forget them, their strength of purpose and charity. She even prays for Rosencrantz, however disrespectful she finds him. There is something about this city that gives her great worry.

Romeo must have candles and what men remain search the Cathedral. They have reached the one pure and holy place in this heathen city, yet each load is lighter, each arrival later. Four full companies have become a mere score and dwindling. They are not welcome, even here.

Romeo stands at the head of the stairs. Hastening her steps, she thinks he looks an angel in the day's dying light. Such a dream in his eyes... she does not doubt that Romeo will remake the world, but his brightness almost frightens her.

Samantha stumbles on the last step but two. The candles spill from her arms and roll down below.

"I apol--"

"I have candles enough. Your dagger, my love. Give it to me."

Samantha rights herself, unsheathes her dagger and holds it hilt forward.

Romeo takes it, turning sharply and striding to the centre of the room.

There lies Sydney Losstarot, unbound but quiescent. There is blood beneath him, though he is pale and whole. He is silent and his eyes are closed.

Samantha prays for him, in turn, for enemies should be forgiven. Her right hand itches; blood is welling from her fingertips.

Romeo pulls Sydney's arms above his head, binding them many times at the wrist and then the elbow. He turns Sydney onto his front, holding his arms outstretched and sinks down on top of him. She can barely see Sydney for Romeo's skirts, but then she can see blood soaking through. With a toss of Sydney's head, she can see his shoulder, the edge of his tattoo, the blade. Romeo is...

Romeo is...

"Do not fight me," Romeo says. "This will only take longer."

Samantha turns, almost falling down the steps. She will wait for more candles.

She will pray for Romeo.

 

 _Physical_

She feels them all from the inside out, running, panicking. She dances through their bodies as breath and blood and knows their deaths when she pauses. The City is dying, she feels that, too, but its skeleton will hold long enough.

"Lady, go with him," calls the nixie, always so generous with his devotion, who even now drip-drips his life upon her cobblestones. But there can be no more contracts, for the nixie has nothing left to bargain with. Everything he has been, is and would be, belongs to her, and through her to the Dark-- including his debts, he begs her to remember.

The sylph remembers a city and a harpy. What will she find, without the protection of her name? Open arms or claws that catch? What are her allies? The golem is silent, but she will not believe broken like the salamander. She must return to the capital (the voice flows dark like honey where the golem jerked, curious and requesting) fresh streets exactly so many leagues distant.

The salamander wants death and consolation and a future for the son he knows as a brother. She holds him in her palm, cupping his breath and blood within that fragile, fleshy shell. She will release him in the dawning light, a breath upon the wind. A nixie's soul is bought with mortal love. She does not lack mercy for the one who placed such a jewel within her grasp.

The saint is silent, curled up behind her. The Dark gives precisely what has been paid for. He demanded power, offering two when one would be dearer if he truly understood its loss. He sleeps, waiting for light or illumination or even perhaps penance, in time. He dreams the dreams of power. He will never wake.

She knows what the golem wants, but he shies from seeing through her eyes, or the sylph's eyes, or any eyes but his body's own. It is enough that he knows a path outside the City. The nixie's mouth forms her words, directing him to the sylph's capital and the nixie's sire. The golem stops, adjusting his burden. He listens, but doesn't not answer her and golem continues his march.

The whore walks the streets in a series of children's bodies. She holds her knife close, both hands wrapped around the hilt. Twenty dolls, twenty daggers. Her strings catch on debris, then her porcelain is crushed by falling bricks, then she falls into the river and sinks and swims with the stream. She hops and skips and finds another doll, another dagger. She is searching, but she cannot remember why.

Their blood spins a rainbow, a spectrum, a chord within her. Müllenkamp remembers that it is her city that is dying, cradle and pyre, dust and so many memories. She is also the Dark's voice and it needs another vessel. Stones and bones, mortar and flesh, the Dark holds its children to their promises.

And so, on she dances.


End file.
